Remember when Devolver Digital had a hilarious E3 presentation last year? In case you didn’t here it is:
Why am I linking the first one? Because it kinda sorta ties into this years presentation… kinda. That and it’s still as funny as I remember it.
I think my favorite thing to take away from it was their Lootboxcoin, impressive that they made fun of both lootboxes and cryptocurrency at the same time. I am kinda bummed that they didn’t show anything for Serious Sam 4 though… oh well.
It’s times like these I’m really glad I built my PC gaming arsenal for whenever I’m feeling under the weather. I’ve pretty much been stuck in bed since yesterday. Not feeling well enough to play I got my controller collection out and played a few games in bed. Practiced a bit in MGS2’s VR missions, tried to play Carmageddon Max Damage but ran into some memory allocation errors (will research at another date), then I checked out Quake Champions. They added bots recently, and the ability to make your own custom lobby. Then I checked out Overload, had to adjust the controls, but had fun checking it out. I didn’t play much, but I can tell it’s a spiritual successor to the old Descent games.
At some point I’m going to have to try to sleep. I kinda slept for 22 hours and now I feel restless. :rick: Time to get out the industrial candy to sort this problem… :happy:
E3 is in session, and already I’ve seen some cool games and concepts that I’m already looking forward to getting my hands on. I’ve decided to compile a list from today’s findings. featuring flashy trailers!
Having played The New Order and Colossus I was filled with extreme hype when I saw them mention Wolfenstein: Youngblood. It features what I’m guessing are the daughters of B.J Blaskowitz, two specifically to represent a coop mode. My only concern being if it’ll be coop only or if it’ll feature a single player campaign like all the other games. I’d also like the idea of a local coop, for playing with someone on the couch. 😛 As another small note I wonder how long it’ll take before someone gets their knickers in a twist over these two characters for having knickers.
Skyrim is one of the most ported games in existence. You can play it on XBox360, PS3, PC Thrice, XBoxOne, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and now Amazon Alexa. No word for how mod support will be rolled out, but I imagine telling Alexa to buy things over Creation Club should be easy peasy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TXuDkGesIc
Available right now for free, some fun looking DLC for Prey that rolls out three new modes: Story Mode, New Game+ Mode, and Survival Mode which looks like it has some elements of Prop Hunt in it. Looks like it could be fun, I’ve been meaning to get back into Prey… Curse my many distractions. :v:
I loved DOOM2016, and when they announced they were going to make a sequel I was pretty hyped. The trailer seems to be set in what I think might be New Jersey. :trollface:
Then there’s Fallout 76. This one I have mixed feelings about; mainly due to the online play. I’m wondering if it will be mainly PvP, or if it will let you just play PvE with friends. They show quite a bit of gameplay, and it does look like fun. But it also looks like it could be a big trollfest if not executed properly.
Then after watching Bethesda’s presentation I ventured to my RSS feeds and found this potential cherry waiting to be plucked:
A new Devil May Cry game, something I’ve been anticipating for awhile now. It follows Dante and Nero, ready to kick all kinds of demon ass with some new friends and even new equipment. I can’t say I like Nero’s Justin Bieber look (I almost mistook him for DmC Dante), but Dante looked pretty swank with facial hair. Though looks aside the gameplay looks like it’ll be hella fun. I can’t wait to fuck some shit up with the mechanical arm.
This is another one I have mixed feelings about. While I had fun playing Tomb Raider, and Rise Of The Tomb Raider, it still didn’t feel like a Tomb Raider game to me… maybe more like Skyrim meets Tomb Raider. They do say though that this will be the game where she becomes the legendary badass heroine she is known the world over for. As usual the graphics do easily impress, and the gameplay looks more or less like the previous two games. I do look forward to it, I just hope for a less whiny Lara this time around. I forgave it in the reboot since this was supposed to be her origin story, but in ROTT there were certain points where it was too annoying for me. Also, Microsoft had better not pull that timed exclusive bullshit again. It didn’t make sense to do that with a game that has been on multiple platforms since the dawn of fucking time. :zorak:
Then of course the lovely Ori is back in Ori and the will of the wisps. Much like its predecessor it features the same graphics with some newer tweaks, and looks to have the same emotional pull as the first game.
Anyone else having fun watching E3?
Croteam updated the Steam store page for Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass recently. No new video footage, but some nice eyecandy via screenshots:
Everything looks so nicely detailed, though that shouldn’t be surprising. Croteam has always outdone themselves on their game engine, game mechanics,, secrets, and seriously awesome dialogue and an excellent soundtrack! I think it was also the first FPS I ever played that had the protagonist actually use words! I still remember seeing the First Encounter and being amazed by how lifelike it was at the time, and how many FPS games can you run around with a giant fucking cannonball?! :happy: The correct answer is not e-fucking-nough… I still have yet to understand how such a series can be as underrated as it is. :rick:
On my list of games to be showcased during E3 I think this one ranks among the highest. :melon:
Is it bad that I can imagine this being animated in a Studio Ghibli style? :zorak:
Steam released a post on their blog yesterday regarding discussion and criticism of their storefront model. Let’s have a look at that first paragraph shall we?
Recently there’s been a bunch of community discussion around what kind of games we’re allowing onto the Steam Store. As is often the case, the discussion caused us to spend some time examining what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how we could be doing it better. Decision making in this space is particularly challenging, and one that we’ve really struggled with. Contrary to many assumptions, this isn’t a space we’ve automated – humans at Valve are very involved, with groups of people looking at the contents of every controversial title submitted to us. Similarly, people have falsely assumed these decisions are heavily affected by our payment processors, or outside interest groups. Nope, it’s just us grappling with a really hard problem.
Unfortunately, our struggling has resulted in a bunch of confusion among our customers, developer partners, and even our own employees. So we’ve spent some time thinking about where we want to be on this, and we’d like to talk about it now. But we also think it’s critical to talk about how we’ve arrived at our position, so you can understand the trade-offs we’re making.
When I think about all of the discussions that have taken place regarding Steam’s sale practices the word “recently” doesn’t seem to surface. Kudo’s to them for at least looking the problem in the face though, that might mean there is some hope there.
The challenge is that this problem is not simply about whether or not the Steam Store should contain games with adult or violent content. Instead, it’s about whether the Store contains games within an entire range of controversial topics – politics, sexuality, racism, gender, violence, identity, and so on. In addition, there are controversial topics that are particular to games – like what even constitutes a “game”, or what level of quality is appropriate before something can be released.
Soooo a company that owns and runs a service pertaining to the sale of games (and movies, anime, etc) is having issues with what should be identified as a game? You mean to tell me that with all of the asset flips and games made with the sheer purpose of making a quick buck off of shock value and memes (or just pure laziness), they have issues identifying if those are games or not? Fucking really?
Common questions we ask ourselves when trying to make decisions didn’t help in this space. What do players wish we would do? What would make them most happy? What’s considered acceptable discussion / behavior / imagery varies significantly around the world, socially and legally. Even when we pick a single country or state, the legal definitions around these topics can be too broad or vague to allow us to avoid making subjective and interpretive decisions. The harsh reality of this space, that lies at the root of our dilemma, is that there is absolutely no way we can navigate it without making some of our players really mad.
I know! It’s almost like people have differing opinions or something… Can someone name to me one business that made everyone in existence happy and didn’t once piss someone off? No? Didn’t think so…
In addition, Valve is not a small company – we’re not a homogeneous group. The online debates around these topics play out inside Valve as well. We don’t all agree on what deserves to be on the Store. So when we say there’s no way to avoid making a bunch of people mad when making decisions in this space, we’re including our own employees, their families and their communities in that.
Shorter Valve: There’s so much shit on our store that we can’t keep up… Next.
So we ended up going back to one of the principles in the forefront of our minds when we started Steam, and more recently as we worked on Steam Direct to open up the Store to many more developers: Valve shouldn’t be the ones deciding this. If you’re a player, we shouldn’t be choosing for you what content you can or can’t buy. If you’re a developer, we shouldn’t be choosing what content you’re allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make. Our role should be to provide systems and tools to support your efforts to make these choices for yourself, and to help you do it in a way that makes you feel comfortable.
Yes, bring forth the necessary tools to help both developers and memelords get their product onto Steam… Memes are a lucrative business and all that.
With that principle in mind, we’ve decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling.
Does this make asset flips perfectly ok? Or is that filed under trolling? Also, what is considered “straight up trolling?” and how do you know if it’s trolling? You guys have already admitted you don’t know what defines a game, what makes you think you can even handle this?
We are going to enable you to override our recommendation algorithms and hide games containing the topics you’re not interested in.
Shorter Valve: We’re going to give you the tools to build a wall around the shit you’re not interested in, it’ll be YUGE,
So what does this mean? It means that the Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don’t think should exist. Unless you don’t have any opinions, that’s guaranteed to happen. But you’re also going to see something on the Store that you believe should be there, and some other people will hate it and want it not to exist.
Oh Valve, all kinds of places sell things that people hate… I hate lima beans but I don’t call for them to be outright banned from the local grocery store. But if they started selling Nazi Colon Cleansing Juice I might have a reason to complain. No ethnic colon cleansing!
It also means that the games we allow onto the Store will not be a reflection of Valve’s values, beyond a simple belief that you all have the right to create & consume the content you choose. The two points above apply to all of us at Valve as well. If you see something on Steam that you think should not exist, it’s almost certain that someone at Valve is right there with you.
Sorry, my brain shut down when they got to the part about “values”. I retract what I said earlier about there being hope for Valve…
Anyone else have thoughts on their blog post?
Naturally when I think about something too much it inevitably causes me to migrate towards whatever I’m thinking about. In this case my Linux install, which has come to a bit of a halt for the time being due to the fact that its kernel is too old for my new chipset. There are a few other options I could try; such as adding another repo and installing a newer kernel via command line. There is also installing another distro entirely, but I wouldn’t be sure what one to go with. I don’t like Ubuntu, Mint left a bad taste in my mouth, and Fedora can go fuck itself with a bag of salted dicks. This is something I’ll have to sit and chew on. :zorak:
Guess it’s back to my shenanigans.. :melon:
I’ve been contemplating a Linux reinstall for quite some time, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to run it in a VM or as a dualboot. I’ve decided on the latter as I want to see how it performs. Linux ran awesomely on my old Xeon setup, crummy AMD GPU drivers aside. But now with Vega and Ryzen, and better drivers under Linux I want to see how things perform from general use to gaming. Most of the software I use under Windows is Open Source or able to run under Linux (how far we’ve come) and this includes my recording and video editing software. 😀 Perhaps I’ll do some side by side comparisons once I get established, and maybe even some videos. I wonder if they have the AMF H.264 codec running under the Linux version of OBS? That would make recording soooooo much nicer, it was one of the reasons why I pretty much did all my work in Windows instead… well there was that and the fact I couldn’t find any video editing software that could compare to Premiere, but with Shotcut I don’t see that as a problem.
So far my transferable list of programs consists of: OBS Studio, Shotcut, Krita, Audacity, VLC, Waterfox, and I recently reinstalled Pidgin (got fed up with Chatzilla). Then of course there’s Steam. :v: It will be great to go between OS’s again. Should be easier now too that I’m using the same audio equipment between both now, my old audio setup had crap Linux support which was why I had to purchase a Digital Analog Converter to get full support for my Shure SM58.
I’m not sure when I’ll start on it, but I’ve already downloaded the latest ISO for CentOS; Now I just need to pick a day to do the deed. :zorak: